Recently, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced the launch of a new, comprehensive online database of corporate executive compensation, permitting anyone to search pay rates by company, industry or state. The site (www.paywatch.org) states that on average in 2009, executives of companies that are on the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index received $9.25 million in compensation. “At the same time, millions of workers lost their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings,” the site states, “in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
Along with the database, the AFL-CIO released case studies of the “big six” Wall Street banks—Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup—which expose “egregious compensation and lobbying efforts against reform.” The press statement continues, “Wielding more lobbyists than there are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the banking industry spent a total of $50 million lobbying Congress in 2009.” The “big six” profiled spent nearly half that amount. Other details from the case studies include:
*Bank of America Corp., the nation’s largest bank, received $45 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout money. Less than a year after receiving taxpayer funds, Bank of America began lobbying on new regulations—spending $3,680,000 in 2009. Thomas Montag, president of global banking and markets, received $30 million in 2009 compensation while retiring CEO Ken Lewis stands to collect about $83 million in retirement.
*Goldman Sachs freed itself of government oversight by repaying $10 billion to TARP, only to pay out more than $16 billion in 2009 compensation and benefits—about $500,000 per employee. Goldman Sachs also wields one of the largest financial lobbying teams, boasting 29 lobbyists, and spending $2,830,000 in 2009 alone.
*Citigroup Inc. received $45 billion in TARP, and the U.S. government is its largest shareholder. It employs the largest number of lobbyists of any financial industry company (46), and spent $5.5 million on lobbying in 2009.
*Morgan Stanley paid out $14.4 billion in 2009 compensation and benefits, an increase from the previous fiscal year. Mirroring that increase, its lobbying expenses increased 15 percent, boosting it to $2.88 million in 2009.
*JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon opposed the creation of a separate agency devoted to consumer financial protection and believed that a systemic risk regulator should be controlled by the Federal Reserve. In 2009 JP Morgan Chase boosted its lobbying expenses 13 percent to $6.2 million–enough to pay for 30 lobbyists.
*Wells Fargo & Co. paid off $25 billion in TARP loans to end government oversight of its executive compensation and then paid its CEO $21.3 million—the highest of any financial industry executive. Lobbying on a number of regulatory reforms, it increased expenses 27 percent to $2.9 million in 2009.
